


Immortality

by SirTaindoom



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, NO Swearing, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 15:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirTaindoom/pseuds/SirTaindoom
Summary: (Teen for game-appropriate violence)Scout ponders the ramifications of the respawn system. Heh, who are we kidding though, he's not exactly known for his philosophical mind.





	Immortality

In some ways, he had lost the fear of death, but then again, dying over and over every day for five years would do that to you. When something becomes routine, it starts to lose any meaning- you double-check your guns are loaded even though you never store them empty; you kiss your Ma on the way out the door, not because you think it'll make her smile, but because you always do. And dying, well…

It wasn't as if it was permanent.

He figured that maybe when this was all over (if it was _ ever _ over, that is) and he kicked the bucket for real, it still would have lost that sharp fear, that trepidation of diving into the unknown, of leaving everything he loved behind, of closing the book on his story.

It's not everyone who gets the chance to say that they've done it all before.

True, he'd never actually "passed on,'' despite what Demo claimed about them already being dead and in their own personal Hell. (The Scot had broken into Medic's ethanol at the time and had passed out on the kitchen table immediately afterwards, so there was a good chance that he'd forgotten their mission in actual Hell the month before. It had definitely been more unpleasant than the 105 degree weather in Badwater Basin.)

Demo had a point though. Despite having lost any sort of fear of the concept of death, actually dying was something he tried to avoid as actively as he could. Yeah, he still had his self-preservation instinct, and yeah, the Administrator would have his head, literally, (not to mention his job) if he ever gave less than 110%, and yeah, there was the point of pride where he had to make sure that all those other losers knew who was at the top of the food chain. Those were all good reasons not to use the respawn system as a crutch, but there was a more important excuse to dodge as many bullets as he could, to know where all the medi-kits were, to judge when to engage and when to duck into cover.

Death freakin' hurt.

And in the badlands, there were oh so many ways to die. None of which were anything short of excruciating.

There was being mowed down by Heavy's minigun- a few bullets to his legs would be enough to shatter them, and he'd stagger against a wall, bracing himself against it as he emptied his pistol into the grinning behemoth, unable to jump out of the way. It rarely made any difference, though. His whole body would fill with lead, and the last thing he'd see as he slid to the ground would be his own blood splattered against the wall behind him over a horribly large area- one glistening red spot for each custom bullet.

There were the times where he'd round a corner to find the enemy Pyro waiting for him and his momentum would carry him straight into the flamethrower's searing bursts of fire. Once he'd been torched, that was usually the end of the line for him. Sure, he was fast enough that he could outrun the gibbering freak, but he couldn't outrun the fire. It clung to him as if it were a liquid that had been splashed onto his flesh, and it burned with an intense ferocity that he was sure could not be natural. He'd rush for a medi-kit or even just the closest puddle and pray that he got there before the fire charred the muscles off his arms, before he collapsed on the floor in a screaming mess of smoke and visible bones. It was one of the slower deaths, and he'd be incapacitated for a good minute or so before his body gave out, but even with his eyes melted away, his hearing wouldn't completely fade and the Pyro's muffled and sickeningly joyous laughter always seemed to follow him into the respawn system.

The few times Medic had managed to off him had been memorably painful. Each of the needles fired from his syringe gun was loaded with a toxin that immediately attacked his nervous system. They didn't do much damage, but it was extremely difficult fighting back when each body part with a syringe sticking out of it felt as if a million wasps had been shoved into it and it was swelling to three times its usual size. 

Some days the anticipation was almost as bad as the actual pain. He'd lie in bed the morning before a match and cover his face with trembling hands, telling himself over and over that he loved his job, (and he really did, but...) that he was the absolute best at it (which was the truest statement in the world), and that a little bit of semi-constant suffering was not going to stop him from anything (and anybody who would say otherwise would get their teeth kicked in). Even so, on days like that, sometimes it would take him up to ten minutes just to pull himself out of bed, and he'd have to drink two cans of_ Bonk! _ before he could swagger into the common room like his normal confident self again. No sane person would look forward to exploding in searing fireballs on an hourly basis, and despite the jibes Spy would idly toss at him, he considered himself 100% not-insane.

Sometimes a small, irrational fear would worm its way into his head while he was running his daily laps around whichever base they were stationed at, or mid-battle as he vaulted high over an obvious stickytrap. What if respawn failed? What if the next time he died, it was permanent? He wouldn’t know whether or not this would be the time the safety net broke, whether or not this would be a death he wouldn’t wake up from. He would come out of respawn with a gasp, pressing a hand to his chest as he felt pure relief rush through him simply at being alive. Again. Alive again. He’d give a desperate, nervous laugh and resolve not to take being alive for granted again even as his mind berated him for worrying about something that foolish. Of course the respawn system wouldn’t go down, it had functioned steadily for all of the tens of thousands of times he had been churned through it, and it wasn’t about to fail all of a sudden. Even so, as he rushed out the resupply door, he often had to brush away the intrusive thought of “what if _ this _time…?”

It wasn't _ all _bad, though. In fact, he was extremely proud of some of his deaths, and would retell their stories to whichever member of his team would pretend to listen. 

There was the one time at 2-Fort (the map, as opposed to Teufort the town, where he'd never actually died) when he had captured the enemy intelligence and was on his way back to his base. He'd rushed to the balcony of the enemy base sporting only a single wound in his shoulder from where the Engineer had tried to peg him as he rushed past their spawn doors. As the bridge came into view, so did the enemy Sniper, who glanced up from his scope with a surprised expression and made as if to tackle him, dropping his rifle and unsheathing his giant machete knife thing (he always specifically remembered not to call it a kukri, it made Snipers hilariously peeved) in a single, fluid motion. They collided. He pulled the trigger and his scattergun blasted an ugly red mess into the Sniper's ribcage, causing the older man to stagger back. Normally he'd love to stay and beat the Australian to a bloody pulp, but he had the Intel to think of. He pushed off the balcony in a spectacular leap, twisting around in mid-air to send two more rounds into the doomed Sniper as he flew backwards. He landed, but stumbled as he began to cross the bridge leading back to his base, falling to his hands and knees. He tried to throw himself back on his feet only to trip over his own intestines as they got caught under his shoes, and if he'd been trying to ignore the pain before, it was downright impossible now. (No, he didn't scream, screaming wasn't manly. He _ shouted _ .) He’d glanced behind him and the Heavy stepped out of the darkened doorway and began to spin up his gun, and the Engineer had followed him out onto the ramparts and was standing next to the Sniper’s body with his pistol out, and he knew that the two of them didn't even matter because he was losing so much blood that he imagined he could hear it spilling through the slats of the bridge and dribbling into the scummy water below, and everything was so _ bright _ after the darkened intel room and dim hallways and he was gasping for breath and his head was spinning and his ears were buzzing and his stomach had been sliced _ clean open _ and _ where was his team _?

Through the panic of his mind, there was one anchoring thought, and that was the enemy Intelligence. Saving it was top priority- it was his mission and the reason for each of his deaths that day and the deaths of all his teammates and enemies. So with a yell of determination, he grabbed it from his back and spun for extra momentum, (and he would never want to experience the feeling of ripping his own guts, never again) and threw it clear to the other side of the bridge, where it landed right in the middle of Engie's nest. (A lucky throw, but when retelling the story, it would of course be attributed to pure skill) Later, he would learn that Engie had passed it to Pyro, who capped it, winning the round for the day, but for the moment, he smiled weakly in victory at getting it this far, in playing his part and doing his job better than anyone could have expected of him. And with that, he collapsed in the pool of his own blood and viscera. By the time bullets thudded into his back, he was already gone.

And really, at the end of the day, that was the point, wasn't it? He had accepted this job mainly because of the ludicrous amounts of moolah they had dangled in front of him, but he stayed because he loved it. He was part of a team that were quite possibly the most dangerous and deranged beings on the planet. (It put his hometown gang to shame- he'd wreaked more carnage with a baseball bat in three days than they had ever done in a whole year with their switchblades and ice picks) Maybe their missions were idle wastes of time over gravel pits, or maybe the fate of the world really did rest on whether or not a bomb was pushed into a RED base. Either way, he could count the number of boring days he’d had during the past five years on one hand. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day was a pure adventure, doing what he did best, heck, what he was _ born _ to do: flex and flaunt and bash people’s teeth in without any sort of real-life repercussions like cops or morality to worry about. He was _needed_, he was the star player, and if he died a few times, that wasn’t too bad of a price to pay. _ After all _, he said as he grinned up at Medic after a mission,

“You think this is bad, you shoulda’ seen the other guy! Absolutely dominated!”

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my drafts folder for almost 2 years, so might as well publish it. Enjoi!  
Fun fact, bleed damage is so rare, I always forget it is a thing that exists until it hits me. The Heavy bit is inspired by one time on Banana Bay- I usually wear pyrovision goggles and took them off mid mission as Heavy because I got my abominable contract done, and was surprised to see the blood start splattering on the walls behind people I killed. And lastly, roasting Scouts is ridiculously fun. U should try it some day. ^.^


End file.
